Fossil Skin Pigment Evolved Three Times?

by
Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Dark outlines of soft tissue often surround fossilized vertebrates. What chemicals make up this material? Paleontologists recently presented their analysis of original skin leftovers from three marine reptile fossils and inadvertently revealed three clues that darken their evolutionary explanations.

Reporting in the journal Nature, scientists confirmed that the fossil halos are made of melanin—specifically melanosomes.1 Special skin cells called melanocytes build and export these oval-shaped bodies where melanin is manufactured. Many creatures use the pigment melanin for multiple purposes.2

The team used time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry to verify that the fossils’ melanin gave chemical signatures that were identical to modern melanin. They also used an electron microscope to verify the presence of fossil melanin still encased in its original melanosomes.

Their fossil sea turtle still had remnants of a dark-colored back just like today’s marine leatherbacks. The mosasaur fossil also had a dark back and lighter-colored belly, like many modern whales and sharks. This pattern makes it more difficult for sea creatures swimming above or below to see them. The ichthyosaur specimen was dark all over, like living deep-diving sperm whales.

Overall, the pigmentation patterns of these fossils resemble those of today’s creatures and show no signs of evolutionary transitioning—which is the first clue.

A second challenging clue is the presence of original biochemistry in specimens assigned an age of, for the ichthyosaur, 190 million years. The researchers offered no reason why melanin should ever be expected to last even a tiny fraction of that supposed span.3,4,5 If the fossils were actually that old, then their melanin should have chemically broken down long before now, leaving nothing behind.

According to the Nature study authors’ reconstruction, the same melanin-manufacturing capabilities evolved three separate times. This outlandish difficulty provides the third clue that these pigment evolutions never really occurred.

Supposedly, some land-dwelling reptile species gave rise to swimming ichthyosaurs—despite the fact that no known fossils even come close to illustrating this. Then, perhaps after they began swimming, ichthyosaurs somehow evolved melanin.

According to evolution, the same stem reptile gave rise to an ancestor that evolved into both mosasaurs and land lizards. So, mosasaur skin supposedly invented melanin all by itself, all over again. Then, land turtles evolved into sea turtles that invented melanin yet a third time.

It’s as easy to say “melanin evolved by natural selection” as it is to say “computers evolve by weather changes,” but the details reveal reasons to reject statements like these.6

Since no experiment has ever demonstrated a natural process inventing even a single biochemical like these, and since experiments have demonstrated that selection of mutations cannot invent them, why expect evolution to invent melanin manufacturing and distribution once, let alone three separate times, in these marine reptiles?8

The creation alternative explains all three clues. These fossils show no evolutionary transitions because each reptile was created to reproduce after its kind from the creation week. Fresh-looking fossil pigment persists in rocks that are thousands, not millions, of years old, and the impossible odds against natural processes inventing new biochemicals like those required to make melanin point to their supernatural origin.

Or, in the technical language of Nature (reference 1), “It is therefore feasible that selective pressures for fast growth, large size and/or homeothermy also selected for melanisation in extant (and fossil) leatherbacks,” although no analysis of practical feasibility was presented.